Early television broadcast from KING-TV, 1949 Courtesy MOHAI
Seattle Newspaper Reports That Wyatt Earp Will Open a Gambling House in the City
On Nov. 25, 1899, The Seattle Star reports that Wyatt Earp (1848-1929), an “ex-sheriff from Arizona,” is preparing to open a new gambling house in the infamous part of town south of Yesler Street known as the tenderloin. The following week Earp does just that, partnering with Tom Urquhart (1856?-1933) in the Union Club, near Second Avenue South and Washington Street. Despite opposition and threats from the owners of the city’s other formal gambling houses, most of which make regular payments to police and politicians, the Union Club is an immediate success. But Earp’s stay in Seattle will be short, and troubled by sporadic enforcement of the city’s anti-gambling ordinance. He has other business interests, legitimate and less so, ranging from Alaska to Los Angeles. Within months Earp divests himself of his interest in the Union Club and leaves Seattle with his wife to continue their wandering lifestyle. The club will carry on for a brief while under Urquhart’s ownership, but will later be closed for good when state law enforcement steps in to end illegal gambling, at least temporarily.
Viewers Watch Puget Sound’s First Wide-Audience TV Broadcast
On Nov. 25, 1948, the first “wide-audience” television broadcast is shown on nearly 1,000 TV sets around Puget Sound. Viewers marvel at the telecast of a high school football championship game between West Seattle and Wenatchee, despite technical problems and the grainy quality of the image.
Seattle’s first television broadcast actually occurred almost 20 years earlier on June 3, 1929, , when KOMO radio engineer Francis J. Brott televised images of a heart, a diamond, a question mark, letters, and numbers over electrical lines to small sets with one-inch screens. A handful of viewers were captivated by the broadcast. TV might have caught on earlier, had not a nationwide depression and a world war intervened.
TV technology was available during the 1930s, and by the 1940s a few Eastern stations were broadcasting two to three hours a day. After World War II started, receivers were no longer built, which hindered TV’s popularity. After the war, the FCC was busy defining new technical rules, but by the end of the decade the field was open for the “new” medium.
KRSC-FM, the region’s first frequency-modulation radio station, brought in television technology at about the same time it was fine-tuning its FM transmitters. KRSC-TV became the 15th television station in the United States, and began training cameramen and engineers in preparation for the opening broadcast on Thanksgiving Day, 1948.
Two cameras were placed in the stands above the 50-yard line at Civic Field (now Memorial Stadium at the Seattle Center). One camera had a wide-angle lens, and the other had a telephoto lens for close-ups. A microwave relay transmitter was mounted on the roof.
As on many Seattle Thanksgivings, the weather that day was miserable — cold, dark, and wet. The game began at 1:45 p.m., and by halftime the rain was pouring down. Wet microphone cords started to hum. A transmission line went out, which caused the game to go off the air for a short time. Engineers attempting to sharpen the image ended up turning it negative so that white appeared as black and black appeared as white.
They Were Not Bothered
Did this bother the thousands of viewers who had gathered at places like radio and hardware stores to watch this event? No. The telecast was discernable, and best of all it was new and exciting. Even though the game ended in a mud-splattered 6-6 tie, the thrill of seeing it on an 8-inch screen was enough for most people.
After the game, KRSC ran the puppet show “Lucky Pup,” an old serial film called “Devil Horse,” followed by a film of the Broadway play, “Street Scene.” Such captivating fare kept hundreds glued to their tiny screens.
Enter Dorothy Bullitt
Unfortunately, KRSC soon proved the old Andrew Carnegie adage that “Pioneering don’t pay.” Broadcast costs were high and sponsorship was low. Within two years, Dorothy Stimson Bullitt (1892-1989), having recently bought KEVR radio and renamed it KING, bought out KRSC for more than $300,000. It was the first sale of a television station in the United States.
Soon after the sale, and fortunately for Bullitt and the transformed KING-TV, the FCC placed a temporary freeze on station applications while they worked out frequency allocations for the burgeoning medium. For almost five years, KING had a monopoly as the only show in town, setting the stage for the other TV stations to come.
Explosion And Fire At The Equilon Puget Sound Refinery In Anacortes Kill Six Refinery Workers
On Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 25, 1998, an explosion and fire erupts in the coking plant at the Equilon Puget Sound Refinery in Anacortes, killing six refinery workers who were attempting to restart the delayed coking unit following a power outage. The tragedy is the worst industrial accident since the Department of Labor and Industries began enforcing the Washington State Industrial Safety and Health Act (WISHA), more than 26 years ago.
On the evening of Nov. 23, 1998, a powerful Pacific storm blew into Western Washington with gusts to 60 mph. The winds created power outages throughout the region mainly from downed trees hitting power lines. One of the storm’s victims was the Equilon Puget Sound Refinery in Anacortes, which lost total electrical power for approximately two hours, interrupting critical refining operations and laying the groundwork for the subsequent explosion and fire.
Corporate Biography
The oil refinery began in 1958 as a Texaco plant on March Point near Anacortes. On January 16, 1998, Equilon Enterprises was formed by a merger of the marketing and refining operations of Shell and Texaco. On July 1, 1998, the company renamed the Texaco Refinery, the Equilon Puget Sound Refining Company. In January 2002, Shell purchased the plant in a corporate wide restructuring, and the plant was renamed Shell Puget Sound Refinery. It is now (2003) part of Shell Oil Products Group US.
The refinery is the largest employer in Anacortes with about 375 people and 100 contract workers and has an annual payroll of $27 million. It refines 143,000 barrels of Alaskan North Slope and Canadian crude oil per day into gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, propane, petroleum coke, and sulfur.
The Problem of a
Power Outage
Refinery workers consider shutdown and restarting operations to be two of the most dangerous times in a refinery’s operation. And now, due to the power outage, the delayed coking unit needed to be restarted.
The delayed coking unit consists of two huge pressurized stainless steel drums six stories tall. The coking process is a 16-hour cycle during which crude oil, heated to 925 degrees Fahrenheit, is pumped into the steel coking drums. The intense heat and pressure “crack” the oil molecules, producing vapors that are siphoned off the top and piped elsewhere for further processing. The remaining material crystallizes into a charcoal-like substance called petroleum coke, which has other industrial uses. The drum is injected with steam and water in a cooling process. Once the drum is cooled, the process is turned over to a specialty contractor (Western Plant Services). The coking drum is unsealed at the top and bottom and the coke residue is cut with a high-pressure water drill and removed. The drum is then resealed and prepared for another cycle.
Errors
Instead of the normal water-cooling process, Equilon plant managers decided to leave the coking drum to cool naturally for 37 hours before opening the drum. The Department of Labor and Industries estimated that 236 days would have been required for the ambient air temperature to cool the drum before the material could be safely removed.
On Nov. 25, 1998, Equilon plant managers issued Western Plant Services, the specialty contractor, a “safe work permit” authorizing them to open the coking drum. Sensors measured the temperature near the drum wall but could not measure the heat at the core. The workers, wearing oxygen masks, unbolted and safely removed the top head. At about 1:30 p.m., the bolts holding the bottom head in place were removed, and an hydraulic lift began to lower the head from the bottom of the coking drum. The men expected to find a congealed mass of crude oil residue, but the unit was far hotter than anyone thought.
